SUNDAY HERALD SUN: Hypocrisy Call Over Old School

CHRIS TINKLER
State Politics Reporter
Sunday Herald Sun February 25 2007 p.28
A mate of Steve Bracks is set to gross up to $15 million from turning a school sold by former Liberal Premier Jeff Kennett into boutique housing.

The Bracks regime has now been accused of blatant hypocrisy by the Opposition, after Labor targeted Liberal leader Ted Baillieu during last year's state election campaign over his role in the sell-off of schools under Mr Kennett in the 1990s.

Labor stalwart Mike Hill, who has held many senior government posts is part of a group that bought Brunswick West Primary School for about $1 million in the early 1990s.

The Victoria St school had been closed under the previous Labor regime.

Mr Hill has since turned the site into a upmarket housing development, with fiive apartments on the old school site have been sold by his company, Westwyck, and a sixth being auctioned for $585,000-plus on March 24.

Work is also in progress on a seventh apartment and another five townhouses, each expected to go for around $600,000.

Plans are on the drawing board for higher density development - with at least another 12 homes - on the rest of the site.

The Opposition yesterday slammed the State Government over the revelations with Opposition planning spokesman Matthew Guy saying "it smacks of the worst kind of hypocrisy."

``To systematically attack the sale of schools while one of your mates is making millions of dollars turning one such school into a high-density apartment complex is absoultely ludicrous," Mr Guy said.

Sources claimed Mr Hill - a former Brunswick mayor- was part of a vocal group protesting about school closures in the 1990s. Mr Hill has admitted his consortium supported protesters who disrupted Brunwisk West Primary School's auction, demanding sale funds went to educating local children. But he said yesterday he neither opposed the school's closure nor sale.

Asked what he thought about his party's election attacks on Mr Baillieu for his role as a real estate agent in selling schools, Mr Hill added there were a lot of things he did not condone during the campaign.

``I'm a Labor member but it doesn't mean I support everything the party does,'' he said.

Shame on.